


do you love the colour of the sky?

by Zannolin



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Dissociation, Existential Crisis, Gen, Social Media, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, anonymous hate, gratuitous mentions of tumblr memes, online hate, the real fear entity is the internet and the art reposters who lurk there, this oc is just a manifestation of my own existential terror and fear of internet fame, written for a zine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:59:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29413758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zannolin/pseuds/Zannolin
Summary: But in the end, gravity is a force that applies to everything, and you can only pretend you’re not too tired to fight it for so long before the inevitable buckling of knees, shaking of hands, before your bloodied and frostbitten feet take that final step over the edge and you become everything you hated, everything you love.Or, Statement of Jasper, in regard to their unique connection with social media.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 10





	do you love the colour of the sky?

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again, podcast fans. This time I bring you the piece I wrote for [Avatar of Fears](https://avataroffearzine.tumblr.com/), a Magnus Archives zine featuring OCs and avatarsonas! It's FREE to download and has gorgeous works, so please go check it out if you enjoy! This piece features Jasper, something of an OC and something of a sona, who was created from my general existential terror and anxiety I experience when I think too hard about the internet and how it is absolutely partially a domain of the Vast. 
> 
> Being a content creator online is absolutely terrifying because it shows you just how tiny and insignificant you really are, in the grand scheme of things, and since I'm actually pursuing streaming/etc lately I've been thinking a LOT about blowing up and interaction and can I just say?? It's a terrifying thought. That's what reminded me this piece existed, and prompted me to post it. I wasn't planning on it, but I think it's pretty good despite being totally outside my normal realm of writing. 
> 
> Jasper started out as just another victim of the Vast who came into the Institute to give their statement, and ultimately ended up giving up and becoming an avatar to avoid the horrible nightmares they experienced as a result of giving said statement. They harbor a lot of bitterness towards the Beholding and the Institute due to that, and came in to deliver another statement as a kind of "fuck you" to the Archivist (who was Gertrude at the time of the statement giving). 
> 
> I hope you enjoy. This piece goes out to all the art reposters who don't credit or get permission....I wish you all a very pleasant delete your accounts and rethink your lives.

**Case #0140504**

**Summary:** Statement of Jasper, in regard to their unique connection with social media. _See also: Case #0122307._

* * *

Social media is a wonderful thing, you know. Well, by the look of you, you probably _don’t_ know, but I won’t hold that against you. I have far too many things which I already do, Archivist, so what’s the point in adding another?

Other people might be able to tell you about the beginning of the internet, the invention of the cellular phone, and how social media as we know and hate it today came into being. I’m not one of those people. If I don’t need to know it, why bother? It’s not relevant to what I do. Knowledge isn’t power; it can’t hold a candle to the might of the great unknown lurking in every corner, every night sky, every mountaintop and webpage. I don’t need to know a thing about history to drop people into an endless Instagram feed or trap them in a void where no one sees their posts, their _stories_ and _tweets_ and _reblogs._

And that is something I do. It’s quite fun, really. Not fun for them, not in the slightest (and I ought to know), but there’s nothing so sweet as drinking in the fear you yourself have cultivated, sown and watered and reaped in a harvest of utter terror. 

Funny, how a simple repost can cause the most dramatic spiral. All I have to do is take someone’s sketch or animatic or fanfiction, whatever silly little thing they’ve created, and say that it’s mine, put it up on one of the dozens of accounts I run across every platform, and it begins. I don’t even have to claim it as mine, you know. Do you know what I’ve learned the three most insidious words across the entirety of the World Wide Web are?

“Credit to artist.”

Sometimes four, if I feel like spicing things up, adding in a “the.” Depends on the day, really. But article or no, they are my most useful tools in feeding my patron, and I have plenty of intimate experience with how effective they can be.

* * *

I don’t have the nightmares anymore. They stopped once I finally gave in and committed myself to my god, worshipped at the altar of fear and notifications and insignificance. I became nothing, and the nightmares stopped.

It was then that I realised where they were coming from.

* * *

I couldn’t tell you the exact number of accounts I have. They’re a part of me, really. An extension of the Vast, that incredible eternity that stretches into every part of our lives. There must be quite a lot, though, because I can feel each and every notification, all the likes and retweets and replies and reblogs and shares, all of them, all at once, crowding in my head and pushing out everything else.

It doesn’t leave much room for anything anymore, least of all me.

I am nothing.

I serve my god.

* * *

I was eighteen when I came in to give you my statement, a freshly minted adult, but I never felt it. It never had time to set in, the cold hard reality of the world as I thought I knew it. I didn’t want to have to drive or pay bills or worry about college. I just wanted to _draw_. You smiled at me and sat me down, asked me if I wanted tea. I said no, and I opened my mouth to tell you a story of an endless art gallery, faceless and nameless paintings staring me down for wall after wall, room after room. Told you how I was there for weeks, and yet no time at all.

How everyone smiled politely at me when I trembled and quaked and sobbed, once I finally stumbled into a foyer filled with people. The concern in their eyes deadening to dismissal, gazes skating over me as insignificant and unimportant.

My hands were shaking at the end. I think I was crying. You called me _dear_ and I said perhaps I’d like that tea now.

I felt so much better, afterwards. You sent me on my way with reassurances that you would look into my story, that I was _safe_ now.

My Instagram feed was stuck on a loop for three weeks after that, the same hateful comments and mediocre likes. And then the dreams started, and I _knew_. I knew you were nothing but a liar.

Worse, actually. You were one of _them._

I suppose I’m one of Them now as well, that sprawling collective of people fucked over by uncaring fear gods, lives shattered and twisted to the point where there was no other option but to give yourself up, become nothing in the face of that great Something that only deigned to notice you if you could provide any kind of meal for it. We’re a motley bunch, aren’t we?

I wonder, though.

Were you one of the ones like me, harassed and haunted until you finally gave in? Someone who did nothing to deserve this life, this very existence?

Or did you start down this path willingly?

And does it even make a difference anymore?

 _Should_ it?

* * *

I’m not the only avatar of the Vast to use the internet, actually. It’s true that before me, it was mostly untapped, but Simon Fairchild’s had his fair amount of clever moments. He’s more of a traditionalist, likes to scare people using the _literal_ sense of the Vast — skies and oceans and spaces stretching ever onwards. Quite _aesthetic_ of him, really, but what can you expect from a painter? He did make that one post everyone hates, though. _“Do you love the colour of the sky?”_ it asks, and scrolls onward, ever onward down your dashboard, down and down and down and _down,_ deepening and darkening and drawing you in until you think it will never end.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

 ~~He’s snared so many innocent~~ — actually. I wouldn’t really call anyone online innocent, not these days. Unsuspecting, then. He’s snared many an unsuspecting Tumblr user that way, and he doesn’t like to let me forget it. Likes to keep me in my place, I suppose. Remind me I’m just as much an ant as all of us are, standing at the foot of something so big we can’t even begin to fathom a fraction of it.

I am nothing.

That’s how it should be.

That’s how it has always been.

Hasn’t it?

* * *

I don’t remember my first victim. Many of the others do, but not me. There are just so many, so many thoughts and notes and reposts and people and a million noises crowding my head.

Have you ever had every single notification noise in the world playing in your ears at once?

It’s like silence never existed. Like it was an illusion all along, a brief break to inhale before the scream continues afresh, and it’s _so loud._ And yet it is nothing in the face of everything and nothing at once, not even a blip on the radar.

And it doesn’t make you feel special, either, being the one to hear all this, to know so much of what is happening online. It just reminds you how uselessly small you are, in the end. I am nothing but a vassal, one of dozens of pitchers filling the goblet of fear-sweetened wine for our patron, and I am so fragile, so perishable. I can be so easily replaced.

Don’t you ever think about your own insignificance, Archivist? You’re nothing more than a slave to the Eye. A pet, at most. A crumb of food, at worst. And yet you continue about your life like you _matter,_ somehow.

It’s almost amusing. Almost.

* * *

I don’t remember my first victim, but I recall some of them. They aren’t notable, if that’s what you’re thinking. There’s nothing special about them to make them stick out in my memory, be spared from the flood of sound and fury that rages throughout my being. I couldn’t care less, honestly. They are just there, in the way that you sometimes encounter another hiker on a remote trail, and instead of feeling companionship and reassurance that you are not alone, you are merely reminded of your insignificance in the grand scheme of the universe.

There, a girl I flooded with hateful anonymous messages, even after she disabled the anonymous function on all websites. No matter how many times she moved accounts, I found her, again and again and _again._ I don’t remember what happened to her, but I don’t send her messages anymore. You can probably guess what that means.

Here, a man I accused of tracing art, convincing more and more people of it until he deactivated his account in shame and hurt. I recall his last post before the account was gone — _I hope you’re happy,_ it said.

I don’t think I was.

I don’t know if I’ve felt anything in a very long time.

I am nothing, after all.

And _nothing_ doesn’t need to feel.

* * *

It was just a whisper at first, really. A little buzzing in the back of my skull every time I got online and scrolled through my various social media feeds, saw all the posts and tweets and thriving people.

I didn’t know what I’d done, back then. I didn’t know how I had made the jump from one of the fearful to the feared, how I had escaped the flickering, glitching feeds and hate and theft that followed me everywhere, on every screen, reminding me of my own failure. Did I just accept it? Did I throw myself into my god? Was there someone there to help me take the first step?

Maybe I’ll never know. Maybe I don’t need to. The self is not whole or unbroken, nor is it anything at all in the face of that great unknown, unfathomable eternity that surrounds us in every sense.

It’s hard to remember the days when it was silent. When my mind was free and unclouded by the dings and alerts and badges that make the world pulse and swirl and fade away into empty space, if I haven’t eaten in too long.

You know what I mean by _eat,_ don’t you? Yes, I imagine so. We all know the hunger, at some point or another. We taste it, and we fear it, and even in hunger we feed our gods. Even we are not immune to our own ploys.

The buzz grew louder when I made a second account. I don’t recall why. I couldn’t tell you the username if my life depended on it — probably some indecipherable string of numbers at first, later turned to something catchy and easy to remember. Hell, maybe it was named after a fandom, again, I couldn’t tell you. Because it wasn’t important. The username, the profile picture, the account itself wasn’t the _point._ It’s what I did with it that mattered.

The ironic part is that I think I started with my own art. I think I took one of my old pictures, cropped out the signature, and slapped it up with my first glorious _credit to artist,_ a few hashtags, and forgot about it. Maybe I didn’t mean to forget it, and it just slipped my mind. Or maybe I didn’t even know what I was doing at the time.

Either way, the buzz began, and it tickled my inner ear for days until I finally caved in and went to clear my notifications.

God. There were so many.

It scared me, _shamed_ me, how much attention my own work could get if no one attached me to it. I was just as unimportant as I had thought, and in that dawning realization, I tasted my first time feeding the Vast. I never imagined something so painful, yet so sweet could be real, could be _mine._

I wanted more.

I started small at first. Reposted with credit, from artists who said it was fine. Then I reposted with credit from people who never said. The more attention I got, the more followers — and oh, did I get followers — the further I went, the closer I edged to that precipice. Eventually I came right up to the edge, let my toes hang over into oblivion, and…

I wondered.

It took more time for me to give in than you would have thought, did you know that? I almost respect the pathetic little human I used to be. I stuck up for so many things. I fought tooth and nail for correct pronoun usage, for the following I _did_ have online, for my parents to respect me for the person I was, not the person they wanted me to be. I fought that last leap too, for so long.

But in the end, gravity is a force that applies to everything, and you can only pretend you’re not too tired to fight it for so long before the inevitable buckling of knees, shaking of hands, before your bloodied and frostbitten feet take that final step over the edge and you become everything you hated, everything you love.

I took that step.

Or maybe I fell.

Or maybe I was pushed.

Gravity took me, the void cradled me, and I Became.

* * *

I sometimes wonder if any of my victims became avatars themselves. If the space bent by my own fall drew them into an inevitable, slow orbit, and finally, a fall. It’s interesting to consider on those days when I am weakest, hungry and faint and worn at the edges by the noise that never leaves me, the sound of a world hurtling onwards regardless of whether I’m on it or not.

Mostly, I don’t think about it.

(But sometimes I do.)

It’s foolish to think that my presence could cause enough disturbance for someone to fall as I did. I am here to farm fear, sow and water and reap and present it to lay at the foot of the endless, ever-expanding entirety of the Falling Titan.

Can something have feet if it’s endless? I do wonder. Poor choice of metaphor, that.

It’s foolish, but so is the rest of the world. The rest of the avatars. I am certainly a fool.

I don’t think I’ll ever know, either way. But I can live without knowing. My patron is not one of Beholding, but of expansion and insignificance. The only thing I need to know is my _place,_ and that is nothing so important as to be vain about it.

Perhaps you do know. I’m sure you’ve had reports of my antics come through to you in all your precious statements. People are so desperate for connection. They grasp for any thread of understanding, of hope that they aren’t the tiny speck of nothingness that they feel like they are, that they _know_ they are, deeper than their bones.

That’s why you have a job, Archivist.

People want to be _listened_ to, want to be _understood._ They want to feel _better_ and _safe,_ to know that everything is going to be okay.

You do such a good job of it. Everyone here puts on such a show of concern and belief and reassurance, and you let us sit down and pour our guts out into a neat little statement form, writing and writing and _writing_ until your damn hand has cramped and your pen is running out of ink, and wave us on our way at the end.

You say we’ll be okay. That you’ll look into things. That we’re _safe._

And then you make us relive our worst fears in dreams every night, over and over and over and over and _over._

Yet you wonder why we jump.

You wonder why we _fall._

* * *

It was a lie, earlier.

When I said that I didn’t remember my first victim? That was a lie. I do remember them.

It was me.

_Statement Ends._

**Author's Note:**

> Find my perpetually angsty ass on [tumblr](https://zannolin.tumblr.com/), [twitter](https://twitter.com/zannolin), and various other sites (same @)! I'm most active on twitter, currently crying over the block men 24/7.


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